January

This morning I woke up with something whooshing past me.

A bird?

A plane?

Um...no. That would be January making an exit. Is it just me that feels like January just started? 

Time passes faster when I'm in school. Practicals, patients, reading, tests, quizzes, projects and I look up and another month is gone.

This semester has been chocked full of lab work and projects and practicals. It can be exhausting staying in the lab after school to finish up the mountainous amount of work, but it's not that bad. Honestly, I love what we're doing right now, crown preps, bridge preps, root canals, ortho, and we're starting to work on actual patients. I've just been cleaning teeth so far, but next week I will complete my first filling. I so prefer this to studying, although I will soon start studying for the National Boards on top of all my classwork.  It's ok though. I don't mind the work. The lab is cathartic at night with music playing and the building almost empty. Of course, I try to work quickly so that I can come home to this handsome man.

Korey has started making beer as a hobby. He got a home beer making kit for Christmas and we brewed his first batch 3 weeks ago. Beer making is a much more intricate process than I thought it would be. 

It reminds me of one of my college lab classes, only instead of growing bacteria in a petri dish, we grew a gigantic yeast culture in this container in our second bedroom.

Clover was a little skeptical. I guess we'll know how it turned out in a few weeks.

And of course, I must mention the great snowpocalypse of 2011.

We heard it was coming and when the snowflakes started falling we suited up and went outside to watch the magic. 

Enough stayed on the ground that patients were canceled and we were granted the first snow day of the year. We spent most of our snow day like this....

Clover loved cuddling with my knitting. She was too precious. I couldn't take it back from her.

Unfortunately the snow was more like sleet on the ground.

Everything was covered in tiny bits of icy glass.

It was a good excuse to stay in, watch movies and drink hot chocolate and cuddle. 

We stayed home for a day and a morning, and then snowpocalypse 2011was over for us in middle Georgia. So we went back to school and then saturday we bottled the beer we had made and set it in a cabinet to condition.

So life is good and sweet and precious. 

I am so very thankful for my little family and good friends. One Republic is singing my themesong tonight.

When you're happy like a fool
Let it take you over
When everything is out
You gotta take it in
Hopelessly
I feel like there might be something that I'll miss
Hopelessly
I feel like the window closes oh so quick
Hopelessly
I'm taking a mental picture of you now
'Cuz hopelessly
The hope is we have so much to feel good about
Say oh, got this feeling that you can't fight
Like this city is on fire tonight
This could really be a good life
A good, good life

Raining in the New Year

I woke up this almost too late to call it morning morning to the sound of pouring rain and the smell of sausage and eggs being cooked up in the kitchen. It was a somewhat strange start to a new year and the traditional new years diet I'll admit, but everything today is a sign of hope to me. Sausage and eggs, the hope that I can have balance in my life. That I can still enjoy food but no longer see all the extra pounds when I look in the mirror. Rain, to wash away 2010 with all of it's heartaches and struggles and leave a rainbow to start the new year off with hope and happiness. 

2010 was the year of learning to live freely. When I look back on all that has happened and all that has not, the more I feel that 2010 was all about me learning to let go of control. Thinking about 2010 and all of its mistakes and hardships has gotten me thinking about 2011. I want to be more purposeful in my life. I want to change the way I think and the way I live. If 2010 was about letting go of things I shouldn't be holding on to, then I want 2011 to be about all the things I should be holding onto tightly.

I took voice lessons at Samford University what seems like a lifetime ago. I was in Paul Richardson's studio, who just so happens to be an excellent professor and, I would say, one of the very best I have had the pleasure of learning from. One thing that he taught me about singing was that rather than focusing on the million things you should not be doing, just focus on a few things that you want to do right. It isn't possible to do both. If you are busy doing the right things, there will be no room for the wrong things.

A few years later, I had a physics professor say something very similar. It was in regard to Lent. He said, rather than give something up that you shouldn't be doing, try to do something good instead. Not that giving up TV or chocolate or cussing is a bad thing, just that it only really benefits you. Why not do something that will also be good for others?

I can be pretty dense, but when I get the same advice in different situations from different people I respect, I try to take it. 

So when I started my list of new years resolutions like this

Eat less.

Weigh less.

Watch less TV.

Complain less.

I started to realize that my new year was going to be filled to the brim with less instead of more. So I started again.

Eat more fruits and vegetables.

Exercise consistently. 

Replace TV time with activity.

Listen more.

Say more positive things.

Run the princess half marathon.

Take more pictures. 

Take better pictures.

Play guitar more.

Earn a good score on the National Boards.

Read my Bible regularly.

Go to church regularly.

So heres to 2011, a year of doing everything on purpose.

Goodbye 2010. Thanks for giving me some pretty awesome moments.

The above picture was not taken by me but by Ken Rada, my sister's wedding photographer.